Distributed version control to the rescue!

We learned the value of a distributed version control system first-hand today …

We've been using Git for version control duties since Ars went legit (read: hired Clint and I). This was partially because of Github, and partially because we're big trendwhores and Git fits our Ruby-hipster-wannabe[1] image. It's worked well for us, but the only real benefit we've reaped from Git that would have been problematic with Subversion is cheap local branching: we've gotten into the habit of doing a local branch per Lighthouse issue, and it's been sweet.

We became full blown DVCS converts today when an epic failure at an EngineYard datacenter made Github (and, incidentally, Lighthouse) inaccessible. Our work goes through Github prior to hitting our production servers, and things sort of ground to a halt when we couldn't push to or pull from our primary repository at Github. When the downtime became excessive, though, a quick Google search turned up an 8 minute guide to self-hosting Git repositories. DVCS's copy everything including repository history locally when you clone one and work with it, so Clint and I both had current copies of all the data Github's responsible for. As a result, a quick push to the newly created backup repository and we were back in business...

This whole exercise would have worked equally well (I think) with Mercurial, Bazaar, or any of the other newfangled DVCS's out there. They're worth checking out, even if you're not interested in being extra trendy and cool like we are.

@Dlux - Oh, so you're referring to the inlined comments? These are still a work in progress. Integrating with the existing forums is proving to be difficult, which is why you see transient problems like you've mentioned. We're working on it, and have a more thorough fix planned, but it's going to take some time.

Originally posted by Dlux:1) Intermittent non-response when clicking 'Post reply'.

2) Some comment sections refresh to the latest post, others refresh back to the article itself.

These are related issues. When a comment posting process starts taking an inordinate amount of time due to a slow POST response from Groupee, instead of letting your session just languish there, we refresh the page. Currently I just send you on to the first page, which is probably not great, I think I can fix that.

When a comment post is successful, we send you to the last page (the groupee response comes back with a "thread post count" which lets me extrapolate what the last page is.

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3) Single edits result in multiple 'Last edited by...' tags at the bottom.

Also a bug which I'm going to fix, as noted in the aforementioned comment discussion.

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5) Loss of buttons to add URLs, images, etc.

These never existed on article comments, so it's not really a "loss", but its definitely something we're thinking about adding.

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6) Lots of 'delay' notifications.

Not much I can do here. There will always be inherent delays when loading delays when pulling in data from a 3rd party, some neither party can fully control (slow ISPs, et cetera). A majority of the time though, I believe the delays to be in the sub-1-second range, we can probably benchmark this.

Also—not that I'm especially thin-skinned—but "attacking" the people who do the work around here doesn't strike me as a particularly good tack to get things done.

My outburst was partly out of frustration (having just lost an intricate URL-laden post elsewhere to the ether), and partly a joke on the perpetual Apple-user's lament, "Fix The F*cking Finder". Sorry if it sounded harsh - it was directed at Ars, not the people doing the work. (Ok, maybe a little.) Anyway, nothing personal against you guys.

*) The forum's can't be browsed with my Nokia E90, I think other Nokia S60,3 phones have the same problem. This is a css/layout issue which makes it unusable.

*) Before when you had the comments etc but hadn't yet converted the whole site the 'flash-enabled comments' worked just nice with my E90. After the final conversion I guess you upped the flash version and now it doesn't work anymore.